(Link to video)

BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2

This version of F-Zero is a sequel to the popular game released on the Super Nintendo, only this time, it was available only for download via the Satellaview hardware add-on. It features 5 new tracks, which were modified over time to become a finalized version...after a few weeks of releases in Japan. There are 4 new cars, which have varying capabilities...as with its predecessor. In following suit with the F-Zero franchise, this continues the same experience, utilizing mode 7 landscapes and the original game engine. Additionally, it showcases a much harder series, known as the "Ace League"...where a much higher challenge exist than ever before.

TASing

After my success of completing the first full TAS of F-Zero, I decided to continue that momentum and produce a movie for this sequel, which is heavily speed-ran by a smaller number of people in the F-Zero Community. Having learned a lot from the original, I was able to apply my understanding and immediately continue to produce a highly optimized run.
As with the previous game, this game was also BOTed. During the making of this TAS, I eventually started calling my main lua script F-Bot...for obvious reasons. Even with all my experiences and rewriting, there were still improvements to my BOT that helped make a difference. One of them, was actually figuring on how to make a multi-instance BOT to prevent me from having to spend around 3 months on each track. Even though it helped to speed the process up about 10.2 times faster, I actually used that extra speed to do more intense work. So, instead of 15 months total, it end up around 10 months where I spend anywhere between 1 to 2 months on each track. In one case, I spent 3 months on a situation that was extremely hard to figure out.

Tools

  • Bizhawk 2.8
  • Lua Scripts
F-Bot: Main Script for BOTing the optimization
HUD: For helping me determine the best routes and strategies, before running my BOT
  • Automation Scripts: Used to help me set up 16 instances, as it was getting quite painful to perform this manually
  • Ram Watch

Documentary

WR Run (MKDSMaster91)

Comparison Against WR League Run / IGT Single Track Runs

  • MK = MKDSMaster 91
  • Edward = EdwardFourZero
  • Trial = Refers to the individual run of a particular track
  • Dif = Difference
  • IGT = In-Game Timer
Mute City IV
LapFramesIGTCumulative1st1st TotalMK LeagueTAS DifMK TrialTAS DifEdward TrialTAS Dif
115250'22"800'22"80 0'23”11-0'00"31 0'22”51+0'00"29
213760'20”640'43”44 0'21”05-0'00"41 0'20”93-0'00"29
313760'20”641'04”08 0'21”00-0'00"36 0'20”85-0'00"21
413760'20”641'24”72 0'21”07-0'00"43 0'20”85-0'00"21
514160'21”241'45”960'20”641'45”360'22”01-0'00"77 0'20”74-0'00"10
Cut Scene-42 Frames 1'48”24-0'02"28 1'45”88-0'00"52
Big Blue II
LapFramesIGTCumulative1st1st TotalMK LeagueTAS DifMK TrialTAS DifEdward TrialTAS Dif
116670'24”990'24”99 0'25”41-0'00"4224"69+0'00"30
215180'22”770'47”76 0'23”06-0'00"2922"97-0'00"20
315170'22”751'10”51 0'23”04-0'00"2922"96-0'00"21
415160'22”741'33”25 0'23”08-0'00"3422"95-0'00"21
516020'24”031'57”280'22”761'56”010'24”29-0'00"2622"95-0'00"19
Cut Scene-6 Frames 1'58”88-0'01"601'56"52-0'00"49
Sand Storm I
LapFramesIGTCumulative1st1st TotalMK LeagueTAS DifMK TrialTAS DifEdward TrialTAS Dif
115170'22”740'22”74 0'23”73-0'00"990'22”36+0'00"38
213590'20”390'43”13 0'21”00-0'00"610'20”72-0'00"33
313590'20”381'03”51 0'21”02-0'00"640'20”73-0'00"35
413590'20”391'23”90 0'21”15-0'00"760'20”76-0'00"37
513580'21”131'45”030'20”371'44”270'22”08-0'00"950'20”77-0'00"40
Cut Scene-39 Frames 1'48”98-0'03”951'45”34-0'01"07
Silence II
LapFramesIGTCumulative1st1st TotalMK LeagueTAS DifMK TrialTAS DifEdward TrialTAS Dif
114740'22”100'22”10 0'22"59-0'00”4922"00+0'00:10
213340'20”010'42”11 0'20”76-0'00"7520"31-0'00:30
313350'20”021'02”13 0'21”00-0'00"9820"33-0'00:31
413340'20”011'22”14 0'20”91-0'00"9020"28-0'00:27
513340'20”011'42”150'20”011'42”150'21”70-0'01"6920"32-0'00:31
Cut SceneNA 1'46”96-0'04"811'43"24-0'01:09
Sand Storm II
LapFramesIGTCumulative1st1st TotalMK LeagueTAS DifMK TrialTAS DifEdward TrialTAS Dif
112510'18”750'18”75 0'19”98-0'01"2318"73+0'00"02
210460'15”690'34”44 0'16”43-0'00"7415"90-0'00"21
310470'15”710'50”15 0'16”18-0'00"4715"87-0'00"16
410460'15”691'05”84 0'16”14-0'00"4515"93-0'00"24
510450'15”671'21”510'15”671'21”510'16”20-0'00"5315"90-0'00"23
Cut SceneNA 1'24”93-0'03”421'22"33-0'00"82

Special Thanks

Documentary Production
  • Aran;Jaeger (Question for the documentary)
  • MKDSMaster (Questions for the documentary)
  • Worsel (Review on my TAS and question for the documentary)
  • Zewing (Question for the documentary)
F-Zero Community
  • E-Dragon (Conversation on my progress)
  • EdwardFourZero (Following my progress)
  • MKDSMaster (Following my progress)
  • Yazzo (Following my progress)
TASVideos Community
  • Aran;Jaeger (Following my progress)
  • CasualPokePlayer (Answering developer questions)
  • DrD2k9 (Following my progress)
  • Memory (Initial help with understanding the ROM challenges)
  • Sniq (Following my progress, and creating a hitbox lua script!)

ThunderAxe31: Claiming for judging.
ThunderAxe31: Another excellent F-Zero TAS by nymx. This is the kind of movie you won't improve without finding new tricks or glitches. Accepting!
Additional notes for the publisher:
  • This movie probably needs to be published as a Satellaview platform, not SNES.
  • There are various dumps floating around and there is none of them is 100% confirmed yet. The good news is that I was able to sync this movie despite having a different file hash than the one used for making it.
  • The author made scripts for making an IGT-oriented alternate encode, just like for the prequel game publication, please contact him to get all the details.

EZGames69: Processing...

TASVideoAgent
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This topic is for the purpose of discussing #8076: nymx's BSX BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 in 10:37.88
eien86
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Great TAS with botting included and a commentary Q&A video. This is the quality submissions I love to see in this site. Yes vote
Player (12)
Joined: 6/17/2006
Posts: 498
Finally! I believe this is the first Satellaview game ever submitted to TASVideos. Amazing! I should point out first that there are 3 episodes of this game. This is the first episode, Practice, which does not require an active compatible broadcast to play. In addition, this episode has multiple known versions, which differed depending on the broadcast date. I assume this movie is for the 12-6 version, but this should be verified. Also, the game is not supposed to be booted directly from power-on on real hardware, as this movie does. It's supposed to be booted from the Satellaview menu, by selecting it from a list of software stored on a 8MB re-writable cartridge. This may affect movie integrity, as a proper real hardware setup may change what values the CPU reads and writes due to portions of memory normally assigned to the Satellaview, plus whatever shared memory values that would have been used by the Satellaview before launching the game, but uninitialized by the game afterwards. This includes Satellaview data accessible to games by design, such as gender information. By the way, is there an in-game time version of this TAS as well, like for the original F-Zero TAS? I'm asking because I'm personally more interested into individual track records.
nymx
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Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 797
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
SmashManiac wrote:
By the way, is there an in-game time version of this TAS as well, like for the original F-Zero TAS? I'm asking because I'm personally more interested into individual track records.
There can be...I just have to collect up my 1st place finishes and have them pieced together, as we did the F-Zero version.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Judge, Skilled player (1274)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
What's the amount of the non-botted rerecords? Even if you can't retrieve the accurate amount, a rough estimate would already be good.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
nymx
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Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 797
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
What's the amount of the non-botted rerecords? Even if you can't retrieve the accurate amount, a rough estimate would already be good.
Honestly...I don't really know. Probably 99% of the re-records were optimized by my BOT. I would be fine if it were set to "zero".
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Judge, Skilled player (1274)
Joined: 9/12/2016
Posts: 1645
Location: Italy
Well, since my previous post caused to start a big discussion about tracking rerecord counts, I'll wait some days before deciding if replacing it for this submission. Meanwhile, I was wondering if you'd like the idea of producing an additional movie file that aims for 1st place in all tracks. Nowadays we can easily have multiple movie files for the same publication page, so it could be a nice addition for making all kind of audiences happy. Only if you really feel like doing it, though.
my personal page - my YouTube channel - my GitHub - my Discord: thunderaxe31 <Masterjun> if you look at the "NES" in a weird angle, it actually clearly says "GBA"
nymx
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Skilled player (1585)
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 797
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
ThunderAxe31 wrote:
Meanwhile, I was wondering if you'd like the idea of producing an additional movie file that aims for 1st place in all tracks. Nowadays we can easily have multiple movie files for the same publication page, so it could be a nice addition for making all kind of audiences happy. Only if you really feel like doing it, though.
I can do that. Just note, it would end up being an edited run of all the IGT bests. So it would mimic the effort of a pure IGT TAS. I would have to write a lua to help the publisher piece it together though. Give me a day or so.
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
nymx
He/Him
Editor, Judge, Skilled player (1585)
Joined: 11/14/2014
Posts: 797
Location: South Pole, True Land Down Under
All...sorry for the delay. I wanted to get this right. The last IGT version that I did for F-Zero, missed the score. So here is a frame perfect version with all 1st place finishes and a correct score. Link to video
I recently discovered that if you haven't reached a level of frustration with TASing any game, then you haven't done your due diligence. ---- SOYZA: Are you playing a game? NYMX: I'm not playing a game, I'm TASing. SOYZA: Oh...so its not a game...Its for real? ---- Anybody got a Quantum computer I can borrow for 20 minutes? Nevermind...eien's 64 core machine will do. :) ---- BOTing will be the end of all games. --NYMX
Post subject: Movie published
TASVideoAgent
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This movie has been published. The posts before this message apply to the submission, and posts after this message apply to the published movie. ---- [5213] BSX BS F-Zero Grand Prix 2 by nymx in 10:37.88